The project "Multaka: Museums as Meeting Point" (Multaka: Treffpunkt Museum) was created in Berlin to provide guided tours in museums to refugees in their mother tongue. How does it work? The idea is to train Syrian and Iraqi refugees to become museum guides who will then share their knowledge with refugees. Multaka ("meeting place" in Arabic) also represents an exchange of different cultural and historic experiences.

Guide Razan Nassreddine, centre, in front of a prayer niche during a guided tour at the Pergamon museum. Photograph: Gordon Welters for the Guardian

Guided tours emphasize historic and cultural relationships between Germany, Syria and Iraq. By showing the common points and by integrating them into a big historical-cultural experience beyond times, museums play a relay role between refugee’s native countries and their new host country, which is very important to establish a context for their life here, and enable them to learn the history of Germany.

The Syrian and Iraqi cultural assets exposed at the Museum of Islamic Art and at the Museum of the Ancient Near East in Berlin are remarkable testimonies of the humanity’s history.Through this initiative, museums hope that this will strengthen the refugee's feeling of pride about their culture and will incite them to get involved in a constructive way in our society.